perl-URI

Uniform Resource Identifiers (absolute and relative)

This module implements the 'URI' class. Objects of this class represent "Uniform Resource Identifier references" as specified in RFC 2396 (and updated by RFC 2732). A Uniform Resource Identifier is a compact string of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource. A Uniform Resource Identifier can be further classified as either a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or a Uniform Resource Name (URN). The distinction between URL and URN does not matter to the 'URI' class interface. A "URI-reference" is a URI that may have additional information attached in the form of a fragment identifier. An absolute URI reference consists of three parts: a _scheme_, a _scheme-specific part_ and a _fragment_ identifier. A subset of URI references share a common syntax for hierarchical namespaces. For these, the scheme-specific part is further broken down into _authority_, _path_ and _query_ components. These URIs can also take the form of relative URI references, where the scheme (and usually also the authority) component is missing, but implied by the context of the URI reference. The three forms of URI reference syntax are summarized as follows: <scheme>:<scheme-specific-part>#<fragment> <scheme>://<authority><path>?<query>#<fragment> <path>?<query>#<fragment> The components into which a URI reference can be divided depend on the _scheme_. The 'URI' class provides methods to get and set the individual components. The methods available for a specific 'URI' object depend on the scheme.